President Trump mocked Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer for not attending a White House meeting Tuesday afternoon, by leaving two seats conspicuously vacant -- and accusing the no-show Democratic leaders of being "all talk" and "no action."

"And now, it is even worse. It's not even talk. So they are not showing up for the meeting," Trump told reporters.

Trump talked to the press after meeting with House Speaker Paul Ryan, along with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

But the president was convinced to keep two seats empty on either side of him, together with nametags for Pelosi and Schumer.

Trump had scheduled a meeting at the White House Tuesday with top leaders of both parties. In retaliation for a Trump tweet indicating they could not reach a bipartisan budget deal but on Tuesday afternoon, Schumer and Pelosi pulled out.

After Trump's open-seat screen, Pelosi accused the president of "verbal abuse."

Throughout the session with colleagues, Trump said that he was "not that amazed" both leading congressional Democrats did not show up for talks on taxation reform and attempted to stop a government shutdown.

"Nothing to these is important other than raising taxes," Trump said.

The back-and-forth points in a relationship between the Hill Democrats and Trump, who had been working in recent months.

Schumer, D-N.Y., and Pelosi, D-Calif., had pulled out of the meeting after the president suggested any bipartisan deal would be thwarted by Democrats' desire to include immigration reform and tax gains.

"The meting today was about keeping the government open and functioning. Problem is they are weak on Crime, want illegal immigrants flooding into our Nation unchecked and want to Taxes. I don't see a deal!" Trump tweeted.

Schumer and Pelosi said in a joint statement: "Given that the president does not find a bargain between Democrats the White House, we think the best path forward is to keep on negotiating with our Republican counterparts in Congress instead."

Schumer said on the Senate floor that Trump was not interested in a bipartisan deal.

"In the event, the president, who already earlier this year stated 'Our nation needs a good shutdown' ... is not interested in fixing the end-of-the-year agenda, we'll work with individuals that are considering funding the authorities," Schumer said.

Press Secretary for the White House Sarah Sanders urged Pelosi and Schumer before the meeting to "put aside their pettiness, cease the political grandstanding, and get to work."

Ryan and McConnell, who both attended the meeting, slammed the leaders.

"We have important work to do, and Democratic leaders have always found new excuses not to meet up with the government to discuss these issues," McConnell and Ryan said in a joint announcement before the meeting, noting that "if Democrats wish to reach an arrangement, they will be there."

Congress has a deadline of Dec. 8 to pass legislation to keep the government open, and no show on Tuesday from Pelosi and Schumer points to a difficult negotiation beforehand.

"We anticipate continuing to operate in good faith, since we have been for the last month, with our Republican colleagues in Congress to do just that," Schumer and Pelosi said.

A chemical spill that ravaged the shoreline of central Vietnam a year ago had claimed another casualty on Monday when a 22-year-old blogger had been sentenced to seven years in prison.

After a brief, closed trial in Ha Tinh Province, the writer, Nguyen Van Hoa, was found guilty of writing about protests within the toxic spill and dispersing propaganda for videos that were producing, news agencies reported.

The release, which occurred when a new Taiwan-owned steel factory flushed cyanide and other substances via its waste facility, killed marine life and also sickened people along a 120-mile stretch of shoreline. It is one of Vietnam's largest disasters.

Phil Robertson, deputy manager of Human Rights Watch's Asia division, denounced the verdict. "The Annals of Nguyen Van Hoa reveals how profoundly the government's paranoid desire to keep political control is notions of justice and human rights," he said.

He added: "How else could one explain that executives of an international company that poisoned the sea, ruining the coastal economy in four provinces, are free to go about their business while that idealistic young journalist is heading into prison for helping expose their misdeeds?"

Back in June, a court sentenced another blogger, Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, much better known as Mother Mushroom, to a decade in prison, too for blogging about the fish kill.

At first, the government provided little information regarding the spill, withholding the names of the poisonous agents even from poisoning victims.

The company, Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corporation, a subsidiary of the giant Formosa Plastics Group, has been finally discovered to be accountable for the spill. To causing the disaster, it was ordered to pay $500 million, and business officials insisted.

Critics accused the government of attempting to guard had received a special deal from officials when obtaining prime property.

The toxic spill deprived fishermen of the livelihoods and set off significant protests across the central coast, which is unusual in Vietnam that was controlled.

Mr. Hoa, who had been arrested in April, is among an increasing number of activists in Vietnam who use Facebook and other online platforms to post videos, photographs, and commentary that are contrary to the government's official position.

Shopping could be overwhelming, even for the veteran shoppers. Sooner or later, everybody does something or doesn't do something, that ends up costing them more money.

There are so many stores, all with ways and distinct pricing policies for shoppers to conserve money, that sometimes when we're in shops, our brains appear to spin out of control and we make mistakes. Sometimes we make errors because doing the ideal thing makes us uneasy.

Either way, place dents that are substantial in our wallets and mistakes can accumulate.

Listed below are a few common mistakes that you ought to steer clear of the time that you store.

Not Taking Advantage of Price Matching

With the rise of having price information at our hands and the net, many retailers have felt the strain of having to adjust costs to remain competitive. There's also been a rise of merchants who now match costs with competitive stores. It is a way for stores to advertise that they have the best prices because there is a great deal.

Grant it, a percentage of shoppers request prices to be matched if purchasing the more higher-priced product, but when it comes to lower-priced things, the interest in prices drops. It seems shoppers are hesitant to haggle over the purchase price of the laundry detergent or the 12-pack of Cokes that they are buying and don't feel that going into the trouble match cheap grocery items warrants the hassle.

It is at least as simple to price match as it is the items, lower priced items. As an instance, in Walmart, shoppers are required to bring from the competitor's ad, and the cost that was advertised lower will be honored by Walmart. For shoppers who regularly buy groceries at Walmart, the money saved by price matching can accumulate.

It caught me that I have price matched for all the wrong reasons in Walmart. I felt ashamed and concerned that I would irritate the cashiers or slow down the checkout line. But once I found it was to do and got to it, I watched the savings add up and appreciated the convenience of not needing to store hop to acquire the bargains. Price matching became as simple to do as taking out my debit card.

To this day my husband refuses to do it. He constantly says that he forgot, or that he left the ads by an error at home, but I think he thinks it makes him seem like a cheapskate, that isn't the brightest reason to let money slip.

Missing Out on Loyalty Programs Perks

It seems like every place that's products or services for sale has a loyalty program of some type. The programs are designed to encourage customers to return. But a lot of us are creatures of habit and go back for a variety of reasons, together with or with to the establishments. Perhaps the company is close by, or we like their meals the best, or we enjoy the hours that they open, but for whatever reason, the majority of us have our favorite places.

Being a regular often has lots of shoppers that never bother to take advantage of those perks or use the services, return to the stores and its perks.

Week after week, the perks that go unclaimed to consumers who never use loyalty programs are getting bigger and bigger.

Again, there was a time when I didn't bother with loyalty programs, unless it related to traveling. I didn't need to bother trying to work out the loyalty programs worked or see if it would be to my benefit. But not today as I paid next to nothing to things I bought on the drug store, get a free pizza every couple weeks, receive a free 12-pack of Coke Zeros every month, one free item dry cleaned, a free day in the water park, a pedicure free about twice a year, a dozen eggs for a quarter of the price every month, free plants at the nursery school, free desserts, and the list could go on and on.

Shoppers that are regular customers receive back a little something they spend and should take advantage of their loyalty programs.

Ignoring Refurbished Products

A good deal of shoppers won't think about purchasing refurbished goods because of the belief that the products are somehow of lower quality and won't do the job in addition to those who have never been outside of the box. But in Fact, many products, especially from the larger chain stores such as Dell and Best Buy, have been checked over with much more scrutiny than the brand new goods and have been analyzed before being put back on sale, and tested

Another thing to think of is that the repairs on refurbished products are done with newer components in contrast to unopened merchandise. Then there is the price difference between refurbished and new goods, which can be significant, with savings of around 50 percent off even more. And lastly, most products incorporate a guarantee those that shoppers must buy.

If you take all of this into account, why, as smart shoppers, do we discount refurbished goods as soon as it looks like it could be a place to obtain a whole lot? The answer is, we should not.

Letting a Good Sale Take Over The Budget

Here is one shopping error that I have made over a couple of times. It is easy to go a little mad and buy a lot of it, even to the point that when we lived 200 years, we might never finish using it all up when something is at a super-low price.

We all know that too much of anything can be a waste of cash, and there is a risk that it will go bad before it is consumed when you purchase the food item. Buying a whole lot of one item takes up valuable storage space. There's also the reality that we may just get bored with the same product again and again and just quit using it.

Before purchasing a surplus of any 1 product, it is a fantastic idea to stop and think about how often you can use it, in which it will be stored by you, and assess when it expires. Personal products and food can be a money-saving approach, but not if it ends up getting thrown away.

On the busiest shopping days of this year, thousands of Amazon workers chose it was a day to walk off the job. Warehouse workers in distribution facilities in Italy and Germany took the day off to demand higher wages and better therapy. In sharp contrast, on precisely the same day, the net worth of Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos hovered around $100 billion, easily making him the richest person on the planet.

New York Daily News reported roughly 2,500 German workers demonstrated outside Amazon centers in the cities of Bad Hersfeld, Leipzig, Graben, Rheinberg, Werne, and Koblenz. Along with asking for a pay increase, the German union Ver.di says Amazon needs to vastly improve the "work culture" and stop pushing employees too challenging.

The Italian Amazon employees that participated in the Black Friday attack stated they want "dignified salaries" more by their jobs. They assembled outside one supply center located in Piacenza.

"Work isn't a commodity," said Annamaria Furlan, the secretary general of the union CISL, which represents Amazon workers in Italy, as mentioned by a TechCrunch report. "The dignity of employees should not be trampled on."

Even with numerous Amazon employees out, the supply facilities in both Germany and Italy were running business as usual. An Amazon representative advised TechCrunch that vacation orders will be sent out without any notice of delay, adding that a substantial number of employees didn't participate in the strike and also showed up for work.

The Amazon spokesperson was quick to point out that the online merchant is a "good company" and continues to be instrumental in creating jobs in regions, such as Italy, where the unemployment rate stays high. Also, Amazon argues that its employees already earn higher salary when compared to other people in the business. It is uncertain as striking employees have since gone back to work when the retail giant is negotiating with the unions.

At present, Germany is currently Amazon's second largest market with $14.2 billion in annual earnings, especially less than the $90 billion in sales generated by U.S. customers. By comparison, Italy is the fourth largest market, behind the UK and France.

While Amazon employees went on strike for more cash, CEO Jeff Bezos enjoyed an estimated net value of $100 billion as Black Friday sales pushed the organization's stock price up. According to Fortune, this 12-figure net value makes Bezos the world's wealthiest person. After departure Bill Gates he earned the prestigious name in October.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau states President Donald Trump's strategy to roll back internet neutrality protections for the net "does not make sense" and that he will be doing his best on what he can do to make sure there is net neutrality for the whole internet.

"I am very worried about the attacks on net neutrality," Trudeau said in Toronto on Wednesday, in response to a question from Motherboard about Trump's plans. "Internet neutrality is something that is vital for small businesses, for consumers, and it is vital to maintain the freedom linked to the internet alive."

Motherboard asked specifically what Trudeau planned to perform to the plan put forward on Tuesday by the Federal Communications Commission, which could pave the way for internet service and superior access to internet consumers.

Beneath the FCC's strategy, which would roll back neutrality rules which were implemented from the previous two administrations, services would have new liberty to charge more for greater internet speeds and may block or slow traffic to certain websites or services.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, hailed the program as a win for the free net, saying in his announcement: "The federal government will stop micromanaging the net." Critics, including a range of media services, say it will do the exact opposite.

Trudeau would not comment on if he would convey the message to Trump.

"We are just consuming the place that the president has obtained and looking at the impact it is going to have in the United States and in Canada," Trudeau said.

The changes could fundamentally alter the way the internet works, impacting not only overseas, but also in Canada and companies and consumers in the United States.

If American internet companies begin charging people access to a fast lane--a faster tier of internet service that would benefit only those services from around the world could have to pay in order to access the valuable American market.

The changes could also embolden the telecommunications giants to charge other companies to ensure access. This might be ruinous for services that can't afford to pay.

Net neutrality is the regulation of the land in Canada, as the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission--which is responsible for regulating the nation's telecommunications companies, and it is essentially an equivalent to the FCC--has worked to strengthen its neutrality policies in recent decades, taking aim at companies that attempt to use differential and discriminatory pricing or solutions to benefit their particular business operations.

Earlier this year, the Canada ruled against telephone giant Videotron following its boundless music streaming program gave preferential access to certain streaming companies.

"A free and open Web provides everybody a fair chance to innovate and to get a huge collection of content to be discovered by customers," then-chairman Jean-Pierre Blais stated in the moment.

Costa Rica has charted another fresh energy accolade. So far this season, the Central American nation has conducted on 300 days of 100 percent power generation from renewable energy sources, based to the Costa Rican Institute of Electricity (ICE), which cited figures from the National Center for Energy Control.

300 days with six weeks left of 2017 to go, Costa Rica could surpass.

This feat bests its own 2015 listing of 299 days of 100 percent renewable generation. The nation went using renewable energy production.

Costa Rica now receives 99.62 percentage of its power from five renewable resources, the highest proportion since 1987. This year, 78.26 percentage of electricity came from hydropower, 10.29 percent from end, 10.23 percent from geothermal electricity and 0.84 percent from biomass and solar. ￼ ￼

It considers factors such as how folks perceive the wellbeing, business environment, tolerance as well as the public picture of a nation's products and services of a country.

​The poll measured "the power and quality of every nation's 'brand image," according to DW.com.

Talking to The Independent, Anholt said: "You will find more than 50 announcements about each of the 50 nations in the index, reflecting views on their landscape, people, tourist attraction, economy, government, educational system, goods, culture, and more besides. Each year to around 20,000 people in 20 countries, picked using UN data to pick a typical sample of the general population, we have delivered this questionnaire because 2005. It is used by more than 40 governments who want to keep track of the country's international standing."

Although the US dropped all the way from first, Germany moved up having been second in 2016. This was attributed in part to the "Trump effect" - the notion that Donald Trump's policies and personality may have harmed America's image overseas. The USA slipped from 19 to 23 for "governance" - something which the survey said was because of the Trump effect.

Sigmar Gabriel, Germany's Foreign Minister, was very happy with the result, stating: "Germany's picture no longer rests on our economic strength. People today believe we're capable of much on earth."

On the USA's decrease, Anholt told The Independent, "It ends up that we do not mostly respect different nations for being powerful or rich or strong: we mostly admire the states that contribute the most to the planet we live in. That is the reason why I launched the Great Country Indicator.

"One of the effects of President Trump's often-repeated America First credo, and the policies that have stemmed from it, would be to send a powerful signal that the US no longer wants to become a Good nation. Therefore it's not surprising that this has damaged the country's standing. That is terrible news for the US when it continues because there is a national standing itself one of the key drivers of commerce, tourism, foreign investment and much else besides. Trump's efforts to boost US trade by focusing on US needs could, paradoxically, have precisely the opposite effect, by reducing the 'brand value' of the nation and consequently everything it sells and does."

The United Kingdom remained in the Nation Brands Index at third, despite anxieties over its standing following the Brexit referendum result, while Italy dropped from sixth and France rose to second. Switzerland, Canada, Australia, and Sweden all remained in their 2016 places at fourth, eight, ninth and tenth respectively.

Ahead of his swearing-in ceremony, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has obtained a unique present.

A biologist has named a newly discovered species of moth after another U.S. president.

The Neopalpa donaldtrumpi is a small moth creature in Baja, Mexico, reports the CNN.

The moth sports an extremely familiar-looking crown of yellow scales such as the gold hairdos of Trump.

"With its own hair tufts, its existence in US and Mexico, and its delicate habitat that needs conservation, I really did have no choice with this one besides to name it to the following Mr. President-elect himself," said evolutionary biologist Dr. Vazrick Nazari.

Nazari said he also chose the name to bring awareness.

"I expect to attract some public attention to the importance of conservation of the fragile habitats in the United States that still lives undescribed and threatened species, and create interest in the significance of alpha-taxonomy in better understanding the neglected micro-fauna part of the North American biodiversity," he explained.

He expected that after this, the Trump administration will make a bid to keep on protecting the fragile lands in the U.S. which are home to as of yet